


don't go far off (not even for a day)

by Siria



Series: Nantucket AU [59]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-29
Updated: 2008-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's becoming a pattern. Well, no, not really, Rodney admits to himself a moment later: two occurrences do not much more than a statistical anomaly make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't go far off (not even for a day)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jenn for betaing.

It's becoming a pattern. Well, no, not really, Rodney admits to himself a moment later: two occurrences do not much more than a statistical anomaly make. But as he stands in the SGC control room, the small sliver of himself that's not focused on the problem at hand is thinking _it figures_. Of course it does: come back to the SGC for an easy couple of weeks on a consulting job; miss John and the island like crazy, but get the opportunity to work on the _honest-to-god time travelling spaceship_ that SG-1 had found offworld; pull more consecutive all-nighters in a lab than he had since he was pursuing his first doctorate; eat a lot of surprisingly tasty blue jello; inevitably end up at four in the morning fending off impending painful, alien death.

His hands are buried deep inside the workings of an Ancient shielding device jury-rigged to function again, and he's yelling back and forth at Sam as she hunches over a computer terminal—she's coding in the operating protocols on the fly, her mind fleeter than his hands can work; and Rodney's piecing together fine wire with a steady delicacy he knows will reward him with a quaking tremor in his fingers later—until it's done, and the shield's up, and all they can do is wait.

When she hits the key that activates the program, Sam's shoulders slump forward. There's a smudge of dirt across the bridge of her nose, her hair is coming loose from its ponytail, and just for a moment, she looks as old as Rodney feels. Rodney sees her pull herself up with a visible effort, walking over to the window where Vala's standing, her jaw set and her hands in fists by her side.

"This will stop her?" Vala says. There's no levity in her voice as she stares out across the 'gate room at the iris that had almost buckled under the strain, at the hologram of the thing that is her daughter, the Orici who wants to end every thought in their heads and replace them all with blind fear and cringing worship.

"No," Sam admits, "But it will hold her for now. It'll keep anyone out for a couple of months, maybe, if we've set up the feedback loop correctly, and we—"

"I am going to kill her," Vala says, and now there's not even a hint of intonation in her voice. She's holding herself quiet and still and dreadful; and Rodney thinks of Jackson, lying unconscious in the infirmary, and of an army of the Faithful, waiting for them in space, and of his warm bed in Nantucket. In the space between one breath and the next, he makes up his mind. There's nothing more he can do here; the shielding should hold for as long as it will take Mitchell and Teal'c to take out the lead Ori ships, and if it doesn't work, well, Rodney might as well be in Nantucket as anywhere else.

Seventeen minutes later, the hologram in the 'gate room winks out. Eighteen minutes later, a subspace transmission comes through to tell them that the Ori motherships have been destroyed, that Adria's missing and can't be presumed dead, and that they're all safe for now. The control room erupts into cheers and wild applause, while Sam gently rubs the stiff line of Vala's back. Rodney's not there to see it, though, already barging in to Landry's office to interrupt his phone conference with the joint chiefs to say that he needs Landry to authorise the _Daedalus_ to beam him out of here and back to Nantucket, right now; and no, honestly, he's at a loss as to what could ever have made General Landry think that he was someone who cared about proper protocol. Yes, he was aware that was sarcasm.

*****

The trouble with spontaneity, Rodney thinks, is that it leaves no room for planning, and an awful lot for unpleasant surprises. Case in point: standing on his own front porch at five thirty in the morning, bare arms prickling in the pre-dawn cold, digging fruitlessly in his pockets for the keys which he realises with a groan he's left sitting on his nightstand in the SGC's guest quarters.

He smacks his forehead, irritated with himself for losing the all-important element of surprise, and so he raps on the door for John to let him in. He raps, and then he knocks, and then he progresses to full-on pounding, because _goddammit_, John's always up to feed Cash and Planck and to get ready for his run by now. He can hear Cash's curious little whines coming from the kitchen, but there's no sign of John, and Rodney's had a shitty couple of weeks and a long, endless night, and he's cold and hungry and he would like _very very much_ to get inside and get laid. Now.

It takes a good five minutes before he hears a thump from upstairs, as if someone has just half-fallen from the bed onto the wooden floor; it's followed a moment later by a dull clatter of sock-clad feet coming down the stairs, and the muted sounds of a cranky, sleepy John grousing, "Yeah, yeah, hold your horses."

The scrape of a lock, and then the door swings open. Rodney gets a split-second impression of a well-beloved face he's missed—of a slouching John, his hair flattened on one side, his ratty old ROTC t-shirt rucked up while he scritches at the line of hair that runs from his belly button down to vanish beneath his boxers—but that's all the time he gets. John's eyes widen in shock, because it was supposed to be another four days, then narrow with something like calculation, and he reaches out to yank Rodney inside by his belt.

The air leaves Rodney's lungs with an _oof_ when John presses him against the wall, and what little breath he has left burns up hot inside him while John grinds against him, hard and sloppy, a lewd circle of his hips while they kiss and kiss and kiss. John's fingers are tangled in Rodney's hair, and Rodney can feel him hardening against his belly already.

"So I, um, I came back early?" Rodney offers, breathless, when John pulls back just far enough to allow for the removal of clothing. John yanks at Rodney's shirt with impatient fingers, buttons flying off to land with a _ping_ on the floor and to rebound off the mantlepiece, and he wrestles Rodney's jeans down to tangle around his thighs. "I was going to call, but I—"

"Great, glad to see you, shut up," John grits out, pausing for the space of five rattling breaths—Rodney counts them, fascinated and wide-eyed at having this nearness of John again, this whole-body warmth—and John leans in to rest his forehead against Rodney's, his eyes closed. "Just—"

"What?" Rodney says, honestly confused; but then John flips them around, pushes Rodney backwards so that he tumbles onto the couch, and John goes with him, stripping off his t-shirt and boxers before settling onto his lap, a welcome weight. He can feel John's cock pressing against him, his own erection rubbing sweetly against John's hairy thigh, and he groans because this, _this_ is what he was missing for two weeks of a single, narrow bed and meals eaten hurried and alone far under the weight of the earth—the heat of another body pressed against him, the sense of someone else caring, the light that always seems to limn John when Rodney looks up at him in moments like this, when they're skin to skin and the morning sun is creeping up over the ocean's horizon.

He could come like this, he thinks vaguely, could come just like this, with John gasping hot against his mouth, biting his jaw and rocking against him, desperately murmuring, "Rodney, _Rodney_," because there's an awful and wondrous power in the thought that John had been missing him just like that, too.

But John has other ideas. John's clearly been thinking about this, been planning it for the ten days Rodney was away, maybe even _practising_ it, because one hand scrabbles between the seat cushions, and John makes a low sound of triumph when it emerges clutching a half-squashed bottle of lube.

"Day planner," Rodney blurts, wide-eyed, because forward-planning and ingenuity have always been major, major kinks of his, and John has clearly done something to his _brain_. His hips shift restlessly under John's weight, because god, John can combine those two things better than anyone else he knows, and this promises to be nothing but good. "Scheduling is, uh—"

John's mouth curls up in a feral grin and his voice is low when he says "Rodney? Stop talking."

Normally, Rodney's not given to following orders, the words _do_ and _don't_ and _stop_ and _now_ making his chin come up in instinctive defiance, but this is one command he has no trouble meeting. Not given what John wants from him; not given the way John's pulling himself up onto his knees, working himself slowly down onto—oh god, onto two fingers straight away, grunting a little at the pleasure-burn of it.

And then John's fucking himself onto his own hand while he leans forward to kiss Rodney; John's tongue curls around Rodney's with the same deliberation that Rodney uses when he wraps his fingers around John's biceps to hold him steady. John groans into his mouth, and Rodney holds on tighter, feels the flex and give of muscles and smooth skin beneath his palms.

Three fingers, four, before John pulls back a little, reaching down to hold Rodney's cock steady while he shifts up and then sinks down and down and down. Rodney thinks that this is the most patient he's ever been in his life; waiting like this, repressing the urge to fuck up and in, waiting for John to come to him.

John fits snugly against him, curve of his ass fitting against the shallow cradle of Rodney's hips so perfectly that they both moan. Rodney knows he must be panting and red-faced and sweating by now; John though—John's gorgeous and glorious, the long, lean lines of him all flushed and golden. He's got one hand resting against Rodney's chest for balance, and the other is wrapped around his cock in that loose, light grip Rodney knows he likes best. Rodney waits for John to adjust, for his breathing to settle; runs his hands up John's thighs and the length of his sides, wondering all over again in the spaces between movement that he gets to have this, that he gets to have _John_; and he's not one for miracles, he knows that there's cause and effect for everything, but how a stretch of sandy beach led him here is a chain of logic he still can't unpick.

John's eyes are closed, and he's turned inwards a little, gone someplace inside him to that fulcrum that will tell him the _how_ and the _when_ of them. He tilts his head to one side, like he's listening to something far away, and when he opens his eyes again, it's to look right at Rodney with pupils that are blown dark. His bottom lip is a bitten red.

"Stay," he rasps out, and Rodney does, staring up in amazement as John starts to move on him and over him; slow and slow at first, a lazy flex of the hips that makes Rodney's breath catch. John's good at this; he always has been, right from the first time he pinned Rodney to their bed and took him like this, but months of them together have made him _better_. He's learned more every time they've done this, whether he's got Rodney pinned beneath him or whether John's the one spread out under Rodney; learned how to use his responses and Rodney's own to fine-tune this; to make it so that he can keep both of them balanced on a fine edge, gasping and shivering, for so long that time loses all meaning.

Because time is real and time is unreal, time has all the meaning you give it yourself; but Rodney's given this hour to John, just like he's made John a gift of his past and his present and the unknown spiral of his future and found something infinitely more precious in the giving: the way it makes his blood pulse and pleasure coil loose and languid at the base of his spine, the way it makes his breath come quicker at the quality of John's affection, the wondrous movements of two ageing, scarred bodies together.

Rodney's hips shift, his hands stuttering over as much of John's skin as he can touch, and John groans. Rodney hears his own voice as a distant, encouraging murmur, his eyes locked on John's and his thoughts on the certainty of these things: that the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time unravels itself, the slower your speed, a universal constant; that the closer you get to the speed of light, the closer you are to your destination; that the slower John works them, the harder and tighter he clenches down against Rodney in that long moment before his back arches and he comes—that Rodney sees the beauty of every physics equation he's ever known written into the imperfect lines of John's body. Breath and body slow as they approach infinity, and Rodney closes his eyes as he comes, and thinks of how the two of them are made of light.

Later, they lie sated and sticky and intertwined on the couch. Rodney runs an idle hand through John's hair, relishing the way John pushes into his touch even while he licks at the hollow of Rodney's throat, and wonders once more if there's a way for him to tell John all the things he shouldn't; if he could tell him how he came back here, and why; if he should tell John about power-mad aliens and the terrible mask that had been Vala's face. It seems like it's important to tell him, but it also seems like it should be important to shield John from it all, hold everything back from him the way the inelegant product of his hands is shielding everyone back in Colorado.

In the end, he decides against it, just as he has every time before. John can't know. Rodney lies there, and closes his eyes, and tells John to go make him coffee; and if an order like that causes a sleepy, indignant kick-fight to erupt on the couch, well, there's only a dog and a cat in the kitchen to see.


End file.
